


december 10th: welcome, love

by watergator



Series: december fic advent 2019 [10]
Category: Phandom/The Fantastic Foursome (YouTube RPF)
Genre: Coming Out, Fluff, Hurt/Comfort, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-10
Updated: 2019-12-10
Packaged: 2021-02-26 04:54:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,097
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21747883
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/watergator/pseuds/watergator
Summary: prompt: kathcoming out isn't easy, but it's a little less shit when you're surrounded with family
Relationships: Dan Howell/Phil Lester
Series: december fic advent 2019 [10]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1559341
Comments: 13
Kudos: 182





	december 10th: welcome, love

“I have a headache.”

Dan’s pulling back his corner of the covers, crawling in on his knees rather weakly as he flops down and lets his head hit the pillow.

Phil is sat beside him, propped up, glasses perched on his nose as he folds the corner of his book page and sets it down onto the bedside table.

He looks down at Dan and he cracks an eye open to look at him.

“Not surprised,” Phil says in a sleepy voice. “You did a lot today.”

Dan’s eyes have shut again. He can feel the ache in his body now that he’s finally stopped.

“I had to. Want it done soon.”

His own voice sounds slurred and distant when he feels fingers brush his curls off his face.

“Go to sleep then,” he hears Phil say, although as sleep pulls him deeper and deeper it’s becoming harder and harder to pay attention to what he’s really saying, and he simply grunts a response.

He hears the sound of bedsheets moving, a click of a lamp and then, finally a press of familiar lips on his shoulder.

It’s the last thing he’s coherent about before he’s falling asleep.

*

His back burns. 

He should probably invest in one of those back braces for chairs to stop the hunch he’s giving himself but as he feels his poor spine burn underneath his skin, he might be too far gone for that. There’s no saving it at this point.

He reaches blindly for his tea and makes a scoffing sound when he realises it’s empty.

He’s about to call for Phil when he’s suddenly poking his head around the glass door like he’d somehow read his mind.

“Do you want lunch soon?” He’s asking him.

He’s in his pyjamas still and his hair is a messy inky bird nest on his head.

He looks good, Dan thinks

“In a minute,” he says as he looks back at his computer screen.

His own face is starting to drive him mad, his voice feels droning and the script he’s written and performed is starting to become less and less good the more times he watches it over.

He doesn’t even hear Phil come in until there’s hands on his shoulders making him jump a little.

“It’s really good,” Phil murmurs.

Dan slumps into his seat, leaning into the touch that makes him melt ever so slightly.

“I kinda hate it right now though,” Dan says, forcing out a dry chuckle.

He brings his hands to his face and runs them over it, letting out a small strangled moan.

“It’s good,” Phil says again, giving his shoulders a squeeze. It helps ease the tension there.

Dan chews on his lip; long abused over these last few months as he’d wondered and pondered if the work he was doing was any good.

He pulls a loose piece of skin between his teeth and it stings, making him hiss under his breath.

Phil squeezes his shoulders again.

“You’re just saying that because you  _ have _ to say it,” Dan sighs defeatedly. 

Phil’s hands move from his shoulders and run up towards his neck where fingers thread through the shortness of his hair.

“Not true,” Phil says after a while, lost in the sensation of playing with Dan’s hair, his fingertips dancing expertly across his scalp.

“It’s good. Now shush and have something to eat.”

Dan sighs, knowing he hasn’t got much choice with Phil.

He sits a little longer when Phil presses a kiss to the top of his head and leaves before making him promise to come eat something in the next five minutes.

Dan smiles, watching him stand in the doorway with an authoritative look about him with his brows arched high and arms crossed over his chest.

“I promise, I promise,” Dan tells him.

It earns him a beautiful smile.

*

He works long into the night. He deletes and restarts and curses and thinks about throwing his laptop at the wall.

He doesn’t, of course, because Phil has long since gone to bed and he’s feeling guilty. He feels everything and he wants to just stand on the roof of their apartment building and scream to the world that he’s gay and he’s sad and he’s sorry because it’d be far easier than trying to achieve that in this video he’s trying to make work.

His eyes eventually burn so badly he’s unable to focus on the screen and he’s giving in for the night.

He shuts his laptop down and pulls himself out of his chair. His bones ache and creak and he feels about eighty years old.

He goes through the dark apartment and finds himself in their room. Phil is a lump of covers and blankets on his side of the bed, a tuft of black hair sticking out from underneath.

Dan sheds his clothes off and crawls into bed, slotting himself behind Phil, tucking his knees behind Phil’s like they’re made to fit.

Phil grunts something in his sleep and Dan kisses his shoulder.

“Sorry,” he mumbles. He feels like he wants to cry all of a sudden. He does, burying his nose against the freckled skin there and lets a few tears slip down his face.

Phil doesn’t stir, but Dan wraps his arms around his waist and feels Phil pulls them tighter, lacing their fingers together as he takes his hand in his.

*

He feels angry when he wakes up because he can feel that ugly monster of depression in every crevice of his body, under each inch of his skin and squished between each nerve of his brain.

Depression is ugly and horrid and it doesn’t care that he has a video to finish. It wakes him up late in the morning and makes him angry.

He feels like a bear being poked with a stick and he wants to scream and roar but his energy is on the floor at this point and he isn’t sure what it is he  _ can  _ do anymore.

Phil brings him dry toast and tea and Dan refuses to eat, making Phil leave with a disappointed and sad look.

Is he sad and disappointed in himself? Dan wonders as he stares up at the ceiling above his head. Or is he just sad and disappointed in Dan like he probably always is.

He knows he’s not supposed to think like that; he can almost hear the tone of his therapist voice in his ear and all he wants to do is screw his face up and mock her stupid advice - it’s only gotten him this far already.

But he doesn’t. He sits and waits for something else to happen.

A pigeon lands on the window outside and Dan watches it for a moment before it flaps its wings and leaves, flying away into the grey London sky.

He’s never wanted more to just be a pigeon.

A gross, dirty rat with wings. Something that doesn’t have a concept of life and all the shit that comes with it. A pigeon doesn’t have to come out to its parents, or millions of people on the internet.

All a pigeon has to care about is not being hit by cars or eaten by foxes, and in Dan’s option, it’s not as if those two things are particularly hard or as draining as his problems.

He sighs heavy and deep and he wishes all his emptiness that’s sat inside him would escape along with it but it doesn’t. He’s full of emptiness if such a thing even exists.

Eventually the bed becomes too big and too sweaty and horrid and if has to force himself to do one thing today it’ll be at least to use his legs.

He has a piss and stares at himself in the mirror. He’s grey, almost, a more far away and distant version of himself that looks skewered and wrong and just the opposite of right.

He makes a face as he splashes water onto his hands and scrubs at his skin with the soap.

He eventually finds Phil in the living room, tucked up in on himself with his York university hoodie swamping his body and his phone pressed to his ear.

He’s humming along to conversation before he notices Dan stood in the doorway with a double take flicker of his eyes.

It looks like he’s trying not to smile; trying to mask the excitement of Dan actually managing to get out of bed and do menial tasks such as pee and wash his hands and walk to the living room.

He tries to hide it with a straight lipped look but Dan can always tell. Deep down he knows Phil better than he thinks.

He watches Phil sit on the phone for a little bit when Dan frowns at him, nodding his head towards him.

_ “Mum,”  _ Phil mouths to him as the little voice on the other end carries on speaking.

Dan does a low grunt and pulls himself away from the wall.

His feet find Phil easily, joining him on the couch where he presses up against his side, burying his face in the space between his ribs and inhales the scent of him.

He smells like fresh laundry and hand soap and he gives a happy little hum once Phil’s free hand finds its way into his curls.

He’s almost fully asleep when he hears Phil talk.

“He’s alright,” he says, and his voice is like an approaching storm, rumbling up deep inside of him.

There’s silence again, then,

“He’s here, actually, if you wanna talk.”

Dan doesn’t want to talk. He hates talking, especially now. Right now all he wants to do is just sit and be and do nothing.

But it seems both Lester's are equally as persistent and Phil’s nudging Dan awake for him to take the phone off of him.

Dan takes it and leans back against the sofa, pressing the phone to his ear, his eyes flicker to Phil for a small second, just to check in on his reaction before he’s looking away again, pretending to be preoccupied.

There’s a rustle on the other line before Kath finally speaks,

“How’re you doin’ love?”

Her voice is so calming and gentle and it’s relaxing. It feels like how it used to be when his own mother would tuck him in at night and press a kiss against his head and promise things would be alright.

He wants that again. Whether it be with Kath, his own mum or maybe even his nana; he wants what he’s missed out on, ten fold now that his bigger and the world is scarier alone.

“M’fine,” he mumbles, his finger has found its way to his mouth and he’s chewing around his nail.

A bad habit that has Phil gently swatting him, making him drop his hand back into his lap.

“That’s good,” Kath says. She doesn’t sound all too convinced.

He supposes that Phil’s done a quick run down of what’s been happening when Dan was out of the room, and he can tell by the tone of her sweet, sweet voice that she’s ready to listen and chat and be there for him like she always is.

It chokes him and he has to blink back tears as he sniffs.

There’s a beat of silence, and although it’s Dan’s turn to talk, if feels like it’s Kath who’s figuring out what to say next.

What she does say is what Dan needs.

“Did I tell you about my weekend away with my sister?”

Dan’s lips get pulled into a very slight smile, like string on either side and he hums.

“No,” he tells her as he looks at Phil, he’s making a weird hand gesture that only takes Dan a couple of seconds to register as,

_ “Tea?”  _

He huffs and nods before focusing back on Kath again.

He needs this today. Something distracting and different and not somebody that’s gonna treat him like glass. Someone who might understand the situation a little more better than anyone else in the world. 

Kath understands. She always has, right from the beginning with Dan, and talking to her - even when it’s nothing in particular, it always feels like the next best thing to a hug until he gets to see her again and do it for real.

He tucks his legs underneath him and pulls the throw over his legs getting comfy.

“So,” he says, feeling a little tiny hint of a smile tug at his lips.

“Tell me all about it.”

**Author's Note:**

> come say hi on tumblr !! @watergator


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